This blog will post detailed news items about GLBT issues. Some of the issues include the "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and gay marriage. Please note that my main website is DOASKDOTELL.COM (link on my Profile).

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About Me

Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

The Boy Scouts of America has voted to end its organization
ban on openly gay scout leaders. But the New York Times, in a story by Erik
Eckholm emphasizes the objections of the Mormon Church, link here.

Local chapters would still be “free” to implement their own “rules”,
but the trend obviously is that it would be difficult to defend deliberate
discrimination in practice, even at the local level.

Still, socially conservative religious groups are finding
cherished idea of “community morality”, that people who don’t conform to (or
compete well within) biological gender roles, should be forced to conform for
the good of the group (a rather military idea), harder to defend. Younger adults tend not to believe it. It seems related to economic standard of
living. Such a view of morality is more
common with smaller, tribal communities that had constantly to defend
themselves from common enemies (as in the times of both the Bible and later the
Koran).

Not much has been said about how transgender people (female
to male especially) might fit in, but, as with the military, that will surely
come up and gain more acceptance over time.

Media have reported the public homophobia of John Houser,
who killed two women in a shooting rampage at a movie theater in Lafayette, LA
last Thursday. One report here on some
of his posts and supposed support of the Westboro Baptist Church is here. His anger seems to have been directed partly
at, not just at his economic circumstances, but at women who don’t submit to
men. That’s pretty familiar with some
religious fundamentalism. But there are
other reports of severe breakdowns in church gatherings that he had attended.

Sunday, July 26, 2015

On Saturday, July 25, 2015, Baltimore Pride offered its
parade and Block Party.

The relatively brief parade started at 3:30 PM and went up
Cathedral Street and Maryland Ave., one block west of Charles Street.

The Block Party was in two sections, part of it on Eager
Street as in the past, and another large section in a block off Cathedral
Street, with a performance and dance state and food in each part. The lines were not as long for food because
there were more vendors.

The Hippo started its dance part at about 8:20 PM (a little
late), with male dancers, and by 9 PM or so the dance floor was filling
in. The DJ offered some unusual brass
and horn music on top of the dance at times, which sounded like atonal classical
dance music.

No one knew yet exactly when the Hippo will close (to be replaced by an art-decco CVS), but most
observers expect it to be open through Halloween. The Hippo plans a major “White Party” on Aug.
8. A major issue seems to be that the owner can't simply sell the club with license to another person as is; he had been grandfathered in.

The area will need a large dance floor after the Hippo
becomes a CWS. Maybe the Grand Central
could enlarge its third floor.

The people attending the events were more numerously female
and non-white than at similar events in DC.
There was a tone of remembering the events in Baltimore in April.

The Horseshoe Casino offered a free after party.

The newspaper Baltimore GL (July 2015, p. 5) reports that
PW, a small but popular bar in Laurel MD, has lost its liquor license.

Friday, July 24, 2015

The woman who discovered HTLV-III aka HIV in 1984 in France,
that is, Francoise Barre Sinoussi, warns that there will probably never be a “cure”
for HIV even though modern protease inhibitors are managing it well for many
patients. The CNN story (in “Vital Signs”)
ishere. However, the tone of an IAS 2015
(Vancouver) paper seems a little more optimistic, here.

The researcher expressed concern that younger gay men might
fall into a pattern that repeats what happened in the 1980s. I was living in Dallas then, and in 1985-1986
saw a large portion of well-known popular men (including a head of the Oak Lawn
Counseling Center) develop full blown AIDS and often pass away within a
year. One minor league relief pitcher,
perhaps with the talent to make it in MLB, told me that he had tested positive
one morning at breakfast at a popular spot, but he had not developed symptoms.

Generally, after I returned to the DC area in mid 1988, I
noticed that the occurrence of full-blown AIDS among people I knew became much
less frequent in the 1990s. Medications
did start to work. Today, among younger
men (locally and around the country) whom I know, I do not hear about this
happening. I think behavior is much more
restrained than it was in the late 1970s, despite what one might see on the
dance floor or sung about in videos.

Pictures: Visit to Philadelphia, July 5, to visit LGBT exhibit at Constitution Center

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Graeme Reid has a disturbing op-ed on CNN of how
authoritarian leaders around the world use same-sex marriage in the West, and
especially the recent SCOTUS opinion, as a proxy issue to make the West or the
US seem like enemies, link here.

The worst countries are Russia (of course), Nigeria (with
Goodluck Jonathan’s behavior before ouster from office), Malaysia (abuse of its
sodomy law against political opponents), and Gambia, as well as Uganda previously.

Non-western cultures are more likely to see homosexuality as
denying parents or families a lineage. But these cultures also view society much more collectively.

Today HRC was calling supporters about the bill for the
Equality Act, as explained in the blog posting here. It was introduced by Senators Jeff Merkley,
Tammy Baldwin, Cory Booker, and representative Dave Cicilline. Vox has an article by German Lopez calling it "the most comprehensive LGBTQ rights bill ever" link here.

The Williams Institute at UCLA has an analysis of the benefits of the bill here.

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

A CNN story about weight gain in recent fathers (Issues blog
today) refers to a blog by John Kinnear. It’s called “Ask Your Dad”. I suppose if mommy blogs have created a
profitable niche (like Heather Armstrong’s “Dooce”) so can daddyhood.

What I found was “Not another political post on the SCOTUS
decision on marriage equality,” link here He links to his own post about a
hypothetical gay son – warning about safer sex, for one thing.

This post concerns a narrative about an early boyhood friend
who turned out to be gay. And he notes
that the world has not changed all that much because of marriage equality. He mentions growing up among Mormon
neighbors. But, as author Gordon Merrick
had noted, “The Lord Won’t Mind”.

I can recall a bizarre outdoor conversation with a neighbor’s
boy back in August, 1950, after I had
recovered from the measles. He had grown
a little taller than me while I was sick.
He said something about the idea that sometimes boys marry boys.

Saturday, July 18, 2015

A private Catholic school’s director of religious education,
Margie Winters, was fired after the school learned of her legal same-sex
wedding and apparently someone complained.
The school was Waldron Mercy Academy in Merion, PA near Philadelphia. Chris
Brennan and Kathy Boccella have a Philadelphia Inquirer story here. Some parents have threatened to withdraw over
the firing!

Winters appeared on Smerconish on CNN Saturday morning.

The Catholic League has its owntake on these firings,
treating this as a kind of “conflict of interest” here. You cannot teach for a private organization
and represent its views and then behave in a manner that contradicts these
views.

I experienced my own version of this “conflict of interest”
with respect to the military ban issue in the 1990s, explained here (Feb. 4,
2014) on my Wordpress “do ask do tell notes” blog.

Smercomish mentioned this morning that the EEOC may be moving toward a defacto protection of gays and lesbians in the private workplace. This is what EEOC says now.

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Here’s a curious story on CNN by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, “Why
are Nigerians so terrified of same-sex marriage in America?”, link here.

The story, by a Nigerian who traveled to Massachusetts to
attend a friend’s gay marriage, indicates that Nigerians back home are
terrified of the idea that gay marriage has become accepted in western
countries.

Part of the issue has to do with the vestiges of
colonialism. Recently British Prime Minister
David Cameron warned African heads of state that Britain might withhold foreign
aid if they continued anti-gay policies at home.

While President Obama is getting a lot of attention for his “deal”
on Iran and while Europeans fret ver Greece, another even is Obama’s meeting
with new Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari, who replaces Goodluck Jonathan,
who had signed Nigeria’s anti-gay law in 2013 before losing control of the
northereastern part of his country to Boko Haram terrorists. Obama is expected to pressure Buhari to do something
about the law.

In less developed countries people tend to see homosexuality
as a threat to lineage, much as is the case in Russia. And that is all some families think they have
to hang on to.

Homosexuality is becoming a proxy for divide between the
West and authoritarian countries, just as it had been a proxy issue for controversies
over “individualism” when I was growing up. This is certainly an issue for gay employees of companies that need associates to travel and even work temporarily in these countries.

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Monday, news media reported that the US Armed forces are
drawing up a plan to admit transgender military personnel or allow TG to remain
in the service after change. AP story by Lolita Baldor is here ABC has an interesting story about female-to-male soldier Shane Ortega here.

And the Boy Scouts of America will reconsider completely
removing the ban on adult gay scout leaders. The BBC story is here. But Voxreports that Scott Walker (R-WI governor and presidential candidate) claims that the ban "protects children" (from what, "deciding" to live as gay adults and not have children? -- sounds like Vladimir Putin).

Saturday night, I did visit the Pulse Disco in Orlando. There was definitely a Latino night
feel. I don’t know if this is normal on
Saturdays. There are two main (both small) dance floors or rooms, with male
dancers in the smaller of the two.

The bar was about two miles south of the center of downtown
(which fooled me); on Orange St and Main
there was a street festival, with break dancers, and many streets closed. It seemed to be a “barfest”. I went into a place called the Sidekick.

Thursday, July 09, 2015

Much as in Russia, gay men in India are afraid to go to
police when they are attacked or robbed after encounters. But, while Russia
ironically has no sodomy law (“just” a propaganda law), in India the
unwillingness of the Supreme Court to overturn India’s British-colonial sodomy
laws adds fuel to the problem. The Wall
Street Journal has a story here on p. A6 Thursday July 9. Britain overturned its own sodomy law in
1967, fifteen years after Alan Turing.

Monday, July 06, 2015

German Lopez of Vox Media is reporting that a “teacher of
the year” in Multnomal, Oregon was fired after he complained about anti-gay harassment. Oregon is a state that protects public
employees from sexual orientation discrimination, Idaho does not. German Lopez has the story on Vox here.

The school district says that he spent time out of class on
activism, and was perhaos losing disciplinary control of some students and behaving in an
insubordinate manner himself. But he may
very well win his legal case. Of course, a major issue is a public employee's free speech, and "distribution".

Sunday, July 05, 2015

Today, I visited the LGBT History Exhibit at the National
Constitution Center on Arch and 6th Streets in Philadelphia. A parking lot, though expensive, was
available on block to the west on Arch.

The was part of the 50th anniversary (to organizing in 1965) LGBT history celebration. I walked the gayborhood and to Washington Square but seemed to miss the end of the festival.

The formal title was “Speaking Out for
Equality: The Constitution, Gay Rights and the Supreme Court.

The internals of the exhibit did not allow photography. The
biggest emphasis was on the very early days, in the 1950s and 1960s, when
flagrant discrimination was rampant. The
Supreme Court history includes Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), Lawrence v. Texas
(2003), DOMA, and Obergefell v. Hodges.

There was a letter from the State Department in 1960 to
Frank Kameny, which restated the government’s circular reasons for firing
homosexuals at the time.

There was also a replaying of Mike Wallace’s horrific 1967
hour long documentary “The Homosexuals”.

Friday, July 03, 2015

Jack Hunter of Politico (usually free in print at Starbucks)
has a piece (“Republicans are too angry about gay marriage”) today about
partisanship and gay equality – especially marriage equality, but in the past
the same polarization has happened with the military issue, HIV issues, and
even sodomy laws. The link is here. The most hyperbolic is Santorum’s claim that
stopping gay marriage was “about the survival of the country” which sounds more
true of Russia (with its low birth rate).
Remember Santorum’s 2004 attempted constitutional amendment, when Diane
Feinstein was trying to get him to look at and spend real time on an
anti-terrorism bill?

OK, yes, I know the Log Cabin Republicans. Gradually they are making a real difference. (Not quite "we".) It's always been interesting how conservative "fiscally" a lot of more "successful" LGBT professionals are, and always have been. That points toward libertarianism.

Yes, partisanship is often about fear, and about fitting independent
wavering people into a social, loyalty and political structure created by
others. It’s something that
authoritarian leaders (like Vladimir Putin) master all too well

Thursday, July 02, 2015

It’s still legal in some states for retail establishments to
bar homosexuals from the premises (although how they can “tell” would be
interesting), according to a Vox story by German Lopez here. The story concerns “Amyx Hardware &
Roofing Supplies” in Grainger County, TN (NE, between the Smokies and
Cumberlands), belonging to a Baptist minister.

Slate has a good article by Zach Howe. “Homophobia is a real fear, but of what,
exactly?” here. Many men, especially in less educated
cultures, grow up in an environment where “zero tolerance” of sexual or gender
deviation becomes an important piece of their identity and ability to perform
with women. It’s a bad system.

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